Julian, I wouldn’t hold out much hope of Australian farmers becoming custodians of the land . .cleansing the waters. The Australian Farmer’s Federation are a dystopian bunch of fundamentalists and climate change sceptics.
They have spent the last two hundred years ruining our farmland and are now demanding subsidies to decamp to northern Australia and ruin it too.
As to the poor and starving of the world, nobody gives a rat’s, if they have anything left it will be taken from them by the rich and powerfull . .
Witness …
The Chinese in Tibet
The Jews in Palestine
The Americans in Iraq
Nice sentiments, but I don’t think so.

Those of you who continually harp on about unsustainable economic activity and carry on about corporations are going to change nothing.

Corporations cannot starve to death, they are adaptable and will continue to thrive while a third of the worlds population starves.

What can we do? ... I don't know ... but keep talking and Kev might arrange a summit to come up with a few bright ideas.

Heres a fresh idea. Garden waste to replace oil. Every weekend in every Queensland suburb families can be seen carting truck loads of wasted yard greenery to the local tip. The most obnoxious of this mix are the tonnes of palm fronds that need somewhere to rot. This mountain of suburban tripe takes up valuable space in our waste repositories and as it slowly degrades releases tonnes of that despicable noxious gas, CO2.
Since this stuff consists of carbon based fibrous material would it not make sense to kill three or four birds with the one stone. Convert it into cellophane and ultimately packaging and other structural materials that would otherwise be made from oil.
Ah lets put that silly idea away, we've got bigger problems to deal with, like rising fuel and food prices and global warming and so forth. That's the problem. Australians have a status quo that takes about thirty years for anything to happen. It's like the idea of recycling grey water. A smart idea that was quickly put to bed. We deserve what we get.
And also why do so many Australian suburban yards get full of useless palm trees but no fruit trees. And they have the hide to whinge about the price of food.

Great, timely article. Julian Cribb may not be aware, though, that Australia (together with Canada and USA - and possibly the UK) were the only countries that did not accept the IAASTD report i.e. it declined to support its findings saying "Australia cannot agree with all assertions and options in the report." This is, in effect, to reject the thorough scientific assessment, carried out over 4 years by 400 scientists. The 'assertions' it refers to are scientifically derived 'findings' that were peer reviewed twice. Does Australia reject inconvenient science? Not much hope for young Australian scientists if the government rejects the IAASTD advice.

Australia made it clear that its negotiating mandate in the final plenary that approved the report was to spike the assessment and ensure that Australia can continue with business as usual - i.e. the coporate dominated, agrochemical-dependent food and agriculture system now peppered with GMOs and 'race to the bottom' free trade - the cause of the current problems.

Julian Cribb is optimistic: "If ever there was a beacon to draw gifted young Australians in search of a life's mission back into science or agriculture, this would have to be it." But with a myopic government, what hope for their future?

Australia, with few friends, will isolate itself and go hungry, if it does not radically transform its domestic and international food, trade and farming policies to support local, more organic and smaller scale farming in all countries - the solution to restore health to our global farming systems, as the IAASTD concludes. The droughts across the country are a warning shot.

I am in complete agreement with Julian Cribb's argument that we are living on our national capital. It is probably more correct to say we are mining our land. For example,each year we export up to 7 million sheep to the Middle East. How much loss of soil, water, etc does that loss represent?

One serious omission in Julian Cribb's article is his assumption that we will continue to consume meat and animal-based products into the distant future. If this is the case, we are inviting disaster. It is a luxury we cannot afford if we wish to conserve water, our soils, trees and other species. I am in my 70s and maintain good health on a diet of soy-based products, whole grains, fruit and vegetables.

As for those who write disrespectfully of human beings as 'maggots feeding on a rotting carcase', they don't know what they are talking about. People are hungry because the developing world exports grains that it could feed its people. Visit Woolworths and you will find the shelves stacked with rice and other grains imported from countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, China, India, Pakistan and Turkey. People go hungry because they are too poor to purchase food.

Just more empty words from a mediocre thinker.

If all these scientist (of any old persuasion) were to address the issue of global population, the sustainability and climate change issues would disappear,

I see our resident scientific wannabe has proclaimed “Bingo” in accord, presumably with the author, to display his own failure to see the elephant in the room.

Fix (find a way of reversing) the population explosions in third world countries and the world will need:

Less food, resulting in cheaper prices

Reduce pressure on deforestation, fish stocks, international substainability.

Less government interference in your sovereign rights.

That sounds like the germ of a plan which might produce real outcomes, rather than all the other bulldust which will only produce soft grants for wannabe scientists to parade their egos around on